What is recognition and why is it so important? This book develops a synoptic conception of the significance of recognition in its many forms for human persons by means of a rational reconstruction and internal critique of classical and contemporary accounts. The book begins with a clarification of several fundamental questions concerning recognition. It then reconstructs the core ideas of Fichte, Hegel, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth and utilizes the insights and conceptual tools developed across these chapters for (...) developing a case for the universal importance of recognition for humans. It argues in favour of a universalist anthropological position, unusual in the literature on recognition, that aims to construe a philosophically sound basis for a discourse of common humanity, or of a shared human life-form for which moral relations of recognition are essential. This synthetic conception of the importance of recognition provides tools for articulating deep intuitions shared across cultures about what makes human life and forms of human co-existence better or worse, and thus tools for mutual understanding about the deepest shared concerns of humanity, or of what makes us all human persons despite our differences. -/- Recognition and the Human Life-Form will appeal to readers interested in philosophical anthropology, social and political philosophy, critical theory, and the history of philosophy. It also provides ideas and conceptual tools for fields such as anthropology, education, disability studies, international relations, law, politics, religious studies, sociology, and social research. (shrink)

Given its use of religious concepts and language, it is tempting to class Fichte’s rarely discussed Staatslehre as a political theology. I argue that the Staatslehre can be classed as a political theology because of the way in which it can be understood in terms of the concepts of immanence and transcendence. The concept of immanence applies to Fichte’s account of history in particular. Fichte himself allows for a moment of transcendence at the very beginning of history. I argue that (...) the concept of transcendence is also implicit in the Staatslehre in relation to some problems faced by Fichte’s own account of the role of the Zwingherr in the historical development and actualization of right and moral freedom, despite his attempt to avoid introducing theologically based explanations of political concepts at this stage of his Staatslehre. (shrink)

In a series of lectures from 1804–05, Johann Gottlieb Fichte sets out a conception of enlightenment whose basic structure is, I argue, to some extent reproduced in two more famous accounts of enlightenment found in post-Kantian German philosophy: Hegel’s account of the Enlightenment’s struggle with faith in his Phenomenology of Spirit and the conception of enlightenment rationality presented in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. The narrative I offer serves to highlight, moreover, the critical role played by the notion of (...) an unconditional good in Fichte’s and Hegel’s critiques of enlightenment. The lack of an explicit appeal to, and account of, this notion in Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of enlightenment will be shown to raise questions concerning how successful their critique of enlightenment can really be thought to be. (shrink)